


Yahweh and Apollo

by WOCK



Category: NCT (Band), WAYV
Genre: Angst, Fluff, M/M, Non-Graphic Smut, Not A Happy Ending, Qian Kun-centric, im sorry, like barely smut at all
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-24
Updated: 2020-03-24
Packaged: 2021-03-01 03:01:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,813
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23288188
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WOCK/pseuds/WOCK
Summary: This I want to remember, Kun thought when he looked at him. This is never going to happen again. Maybe I am the only human, the only man, that has ever experienced this; to hold the universe in the palm of my hand. Everything is right. I am a God. No, not Yahweh. Apollo.
Relationships: Chittaphon Leechaiyapornkul | Ten/Qian Kun
Comments: 2
Kudos: 12





	Yahweh and Apollo

**Author's Note:**

> A few trigger warnings before you read  
> \- internalized homophobia  
> \- water/drowning  
> \- character death  
> \- mention of vomiting  
> \- also blood  
> so don't read if you don't feel comfortable with that
> 
> This fic is kind of a translation of/inspired by a novella with the same name by Norwegian author Agnar Mykle. It is not the same, and I don't know if there even exists a trans of it already. What I have kept the same is the storyline and his peculiar way of writing.

_We shouldn’t be doing this_ , Ten thought.

But it was not a clear thought. It was only a cloud of sun, and warm, tan skin. A good cloud that carried him high, high. And he rested on the cloud with closed eyes and an open mouth. The sun was shining right into his eyes. He really wanted to open them and look up into Kun´s nostrils. With those fine, short black hairs in them. And see how he smiled. But the sun was too strong. The soda-fountain was bubbling in his veins. He wanted it to trickle for a long, long time. Forever.

Kun moved to pull himself free, but Ten intercepted him by grabbing his arms and holding him still. A breathless moan cut through the air.

_We shouldn’t be doing this_ , Kun thought.

It was a very clear thought. And unusually intense. And then there were many thoughts. A thousand thoughts. A swarm of thoughts; innocent, bitter, belittling thoughts. The thoughts gathered into a warm, sobbing cloud that hit him between the shoulder blades. He whimpered and knit his eyes.

There they lay in a heap of sunburnt skin and tousled dark hair. Two faces, both sporting red cheeks and sweaty foreheads. Panting.

 _I´m so in love with him_ , Ten thought. _I have known it since the beginning._

The dirt and heather were digging into his skin, painful.

 _Am I in love with him?_ Kun thought suddenly. Astonished. _Do I know that now?_

 _He has a body too_ , Ten thought.

 _Does he have a soul too?_ Kun thought. Dark eyes peered up into his own, intelligent, watchful eyes. The steady arms around him and the chirping of the birds in the trees calmed him.

An hour later they sat by a dying fire not far the beach and ate wild raspberries for dessert. “Do you have a cigarette?” Ten asked him.

“No,” he said.

He didn’t have any cigarettes, but he would buy some for him in the morning.

He wanted to give him everything. And so he told him. A shipload of roses he would have bought for him, strewn them out like a bed on the ground. He told him something amazing he had experienced once last summer when he walked through the park in front of the library and several gardeners were cutting the rose hedges. Roses were cut off, small roses and big roses. But all of them were ripe, and the petals had started to fall off. The roses were swept to the side on the lawn and gathered in large heaps. Then there was a little boy about three years old, almost naked, barefoot and in rompers, who had pulled away from his mother’s grip and jumped straight into the heap of roses. The boy was almost hidden by roses and petals and was completely mad with delight. Round and around he rolled and grabbed around him with his hands and his senses. It was almost like a perfumed, red shower.

“Can you imagine living in such luxury?” he asked. “Roll around, bathe in roses? On a bed of roses, I would have had you,” he added quietly.

Ten also sat quiet for a while. Then he bent forward and kissed him at his temple, where there still were lots and lots of small pearls of sweat. “Do you think,” he said and picked at a bush of heather, “do you think that I consider this any worse?”

Kun fastened the lilac heather into Ten´s hair. This beautiful, brown hair that was originally quite dark, but which the sun had bleached in large, golden stripes. This hair who had just been spread against a background of heather, small rocks, brown earth and ants.

“Ten,” he said.

“Yes,” Ten said attentively

“You know we shouldn’t do this.” He had to say it. He had thought about it all the time.

“Yes,” Ten said. He turned away. Suddenly he didn’t want Kun to see him so naked; he was only waring some shorts. Kun, the sweetest of all on earth, was not meant to be doing something like this with someone like him. He became stricken with fear at once. He had thought about it all the time.

“It´s …” He felt embarrassed all of a sudden, almost angry over the short answer Ten had given him. “It´s …” Then he grabbed Ten hard in the arm and turned him around. He didn’t look at his bare chest or the soft hairs on his legs. “It’s just that I didn’t want it to go exactly this way. It´s … you …”

Ten didn’t think of anything. Something weird, cold, hard spread out across his body, like a fan, and he strived against him when Kun wanted to pull him into his arms. He didn’t want his pity or empty words.

“But Ten!” Kun cried in his face. “Now that it happened, I’m happy about it! Don’t you see that I wanted this with you! If I have to propose to you for you to get it, I will! Should I …” it bubbled inside of him in excitement, “should I have to tell you that I love you!”

It melted in him, the hardness. It melted against sun and warm skin. He laid down across the ground, a young, naked man laid across the sand and dirt. And he cried.

And suddenly Kun realised what Ten had thought for a moment. And he bent over and kissed his eyelids. Soft breath against his cheek, nose poking into his eyebrow.

“I love you,” Ten said and looked at him. And they both smiled because they both knew that he still couldn’t bring himself to say the same back to him. At least not in a main sentence. They were boundlessly joyous.

Ten looked at his wristwatch; the clock was almost six. They just wanted to dive into the water one last time before they went back.

Kun was going to like this, Ten thought as he stood up, let the shorts glide down to the ground and stood naked in front of him. The sun made the edges of his hair look like a halo.

_This I want to remember,_ Kun thought when he looked at him. _This is never going to happen again. Maybe I am the only human, the only man, that has ever experienced this; to hold the universe in the palm of my hand. Everything is right. I am a God. No, not Yahweh. Apollo_.

Ten threw his hair back and laughed up at the sun just as Kun made a strange movement. He threw himself after Ten to grab a hold of his foot, but he couldn’t catch it. He was already down by the beach and on his way into the water.

_God, what a man,_ he thought and yelled after him. He was left standing by the dying sparks of the fire and watching him. Ten was laying on his back letting his body float. _God, what a man._ It was odd how he wasn’t minding his hair getting wet, Kun thought. The first time they went into the water Ten had his hair in a bandana.

“Swim over there!” he called to him and pointed. He couldn’t stand walking or running into it. In spite of him not being a swimmer, he always had to dive into it with his head first.

_This is how it is in heaven,_ Ten thought. Waterlilies and sun. _When I get out of the water, I am going to open myself up to him. Like the waterlily to the sun. He laid there and looked up at the clouds while the water gurgled quietly around him. Some clouds are large like trains, others are small, chubby children. You can see everything in the clouds. If only you want to._

When Kun came up on the rock and wanted to dive, he didn’t see Ten anymore. He only saw the rings after him where he had dived in. Oh God what a man, he thought. He was definitely a way better swimmer than he was. At least when it came to diving.

He stood there for a minute, he stood there for two minutes before he understood.

Like a wounded animal he ran back; around the rock and down to the edge of the lake. He waded into it while he hit into the water and called Ten´s name. It wasn’t swimming he did. It was wild, manic, senseless floundering. He threw himself forward and tried to dive. He came up again, choking and gasping. Never in his life had he dived from a swimming position before. He had only dived and felt the joy of gliding up to the surface again. Never had he tried to have his eyes open under water. He raged like a madman and threw himself forwards anew with eyes wide open. Eternity under the surface. But only white bubbles and raging air currents in the water. The water was black. And he hadn’t seen a white body. Again he tried. He tried to take it slower. He understood that he had to. But always there were these bubbles and the white lid of air. Every time he dived, he started by taking large scooping motions with his hands. But if he could avoid using his hands until he was under? And hold his breath at the same time? Wouldn’t the water glide past his eyes, without bubbles, so he could see? Again he tried. The only thing he succeeded in was swallowing huge amounts of water. He had the metallic taste of blood in his mouth now. And suddenly he realised that he couldn’t get deep enough. If only he could have dived! Did he have time to get up on the rock and dive from there?

He staggered up on the sandy beach and swayed onwards. His mind told him he had to call for help. He stopped and hurled the word into the air. And an indescribable feeling of shame and disgrace gripped him. But he had to call for help anyways. He shouted while he ran. Shouted, shouted. He didn’t have any breath left when he was on the top, so he had to wait a bit.

If he dived in and made sure to get the right direction and just swam on, downwards… then he could stop when he came to where he thought it was, and then open his eyes. He screamed and shouted, until he took off into the air.

He came deep at once. He swam with clenched teeth. Hurried, greedy strokes diagonally downwards. Onwards. Deeper. Downwards. That’s where Ten´s lying. Then he felt a piercing pain at his temple and opened his eyes. He knew that he had scraped himself on something. Could it have been the bottom? Or was it a sharp tree root? He couldn’t see anything. A black mass of water, with white bubbling air currents in it. The pressure around his ears and the pressure in his midriff was so strong he burst. He tries to leap up with his feet, but he hadn’t been near the bottom after all. He couldn’t hold back against the emptiness inside him and had to take in the water. The black, sick, sweet water of defeat. Half choking, half drowning he floated up towards the light. His hair swayed over his face while on his way upwards, like thick soft seaweed.

At the beach he was left lying at the edge of the water, puking. He got one of his arms under him and rested his head on it. His body was paralysed and heavy like lead. The muscles in his upper arm and in his legs were in pain as if he had been beaten, and they were hard and stiff like iron. His lungs worked gasping and gurgling. And down a black, slippery stone on the ebb ran the blood from the wound at his temple.

He was left lying like that, not being able to move without something lighting up in the wild, black, hopeless hell that arched over him. – _Dangerous to bathe immediately after a meal. Cramps._ He lifted his head and understood that he could get up a bit further. He wasn’t done. Maybe there was a chance after all? Resuscitation attempt. Get people. But for how long had he himself been lying there?

This thought awoke him completely. He started to crawl up the beach, got his legs under him and staggered over to where they had been sitting earlier that day. He broke down completely when he saw Ten´s shorts on the ground. But his will to fight against the gods drove him forward. If he ran, if he could manage to run, he could go down to the sports cabin in less than twenty minutes. He worked breathlessly to get his shoes and trousers on, but it was slow work with his stiff and callous arms. All the while he retched.

There was a young man running, quite a young man, in an odd staggering trot over the heath. The shame and the despair of death stood outlined in his curved back, but he clutched tightly to one sole thought. To run. Run. Reach the cabin. In between he had to stop and wheeze for breath, and then he tried to shout. But he knew that there would be no one there today. If only it had been Sunday.

There was a young man running, quite a young man, in a trot over life and death over the heath. His knees and the entire front side of his body was scraped and cragged, the blood was running from a huge gash at his temple, and his eyes were alight with madness. To him it was an inhuman task to plough through the Birchwood and juniper and heather. He knew he would be too late. He felt that he was almost finished. That soon he could only walk. Not run.

His foot caught in between roots of heather. He wanted to pull it out but fell and was left lying down. And with his face down in the fragrant heather he looked into hell.

Oh, human, human, you misjudged!

Don’t kiss your friend on the cheek with joy, he, the one you meet unexpectedly after years of separation. A frightened look will spring forth in his eyes, and he will blush with bother. Because when you, like your friend, is human, you don’t believe in a storming joy of meeting again when you can believe in homosexuality!

You wanted to sing in the street? You wanted to sing your joy out among the humans, among the cars and buses? Oh, don’t do that! It’s in the shower you’re supposed to sing! No human sings in the streets! And no human thinks in storming and singing joy of life when you can believe in an outburst of madness!

You wanted to love your lover? You wanted to love her in sun and nudity? You wanted to be Apollo and hold the universe in the palm of your hand? Oh, you shouldn’t have done that! No human knows Apollo! And no human loves their lover in the sun without clothes! It is a crime against Yahweh! And when your lover is drowned, no human will believe that your eyes are dry because you have cried them dry! The humans´ newspapers won’t believe in love when the obduction reveals there has been an act of love! They will believe in force and murder!

The obduction! The obduction!

Oh human, human! So you weren’t Apollo after all!

The young man stood up slowly and hesitating from the heather, where he had been lying in dirt. Then he started wobbling on. A few times he turned around as if longing back. Back to something that had been. Back to grab a young man’s ankle, a tan, well-shaped, beautiful young man’s leg, that he didn’t reach before the flexible figure slipped away, before it slipped… But he knew he couldn’t turn around. He had to choose life after all. He wiped his nose with the back of his hand. The blood had coagulated now.

The young man knows what he is walking towards. That is why he is walking slowly. And while he is walking towards the sinking sun – because it is evening at the end of august – with eyes that do not see, he stretches his hand powerlessly in front of him, with his hands and fingers linked. One shouldn’t believe it was a young man who in his thoughts repeats to himself how one prepares oneself for a dive.

If it isn’t a young man, with the salt of despair on his lips, who walks forward to get his hands laid in handcuffs?

**Author's Note:**

> yea so that's it I desperately had to write this  
> my twt is @ DSC0RE
> 
> pls leave some kudos pretty pleeaaase


End file.
